The invention relates to a nonwoven fabric having good draping qualities and to a process for the manufacture thereof.
An important quality involved in judging the textile characteristics of a nonwoven fabric is its draping characteristic. This characteristic is measurable, and depends to a great extent on the percentage content of the binding agent in the fabric. In general, the higher the binding agent content is, the poorer the draping qualities will be. Reducing the binding agent content results in an improvement of the draping qualities, yet generally it is accompanied by a reduction in the strength of the fabric.
In the effort to overcome these contrary factors and to expand the application of nonwovens to the field of decorative materials by providing them with good draping quality combined with good strength, recourse has been taken to mechanical apparatus, such as breakers, decatizers, or calendars. In this manner improvements have been obtained with regard to the draping quality achieved, but new, undesirable side-effects were produced in the form of a loss of thickness, leafiness, and difficulties with regard to wrinkle-resistance in the fabric, and showed that such procedures had only partially solved the problem.
Recently a system has become known in which nonwovens are bonded by a partial imprinting of the fabrics with the binding agent in a geometrical pattern, for example. This, however resulted in the disadvantage that it is not possible by the methods of the printing art to make the binding spots as small as one might desire. Consequently, the finished fabric was a material which consisted in a succession of strongly bound and unbound areas, which considerably limited its application. Particularly in the field of decorative materials, this kind of bonded nonwovens is impractical.